The landmark shop on a major Liverpool road has kept some of the same customers for decades
The landmark shop on a major Liverpool road has kept some of the same customers for decades
A decades-old bakery on a major Liverpool road is enjoying its “best six months ever”, according to its owner. Nearly 70 years on from the day its doors opened for the first time, the Bread Shop Bakery on Aigburth Road has kept almost the same selection of traditional foods ever since, and its owner, Alan Gordon, 52, says he has no plans to change that any time soon.
He told the ECHO: “The products that we actually sell the most of are the traditional things, chopped pork, corned beef, crusty cobs, piccalilli, the old traditional cream soda that you’d have when you were a kid. This Christmas alone, the lemon curd has been our absolute top seller. So I think people are still wanting a bit of a human touch and a bit of life. The way that society has gone with buying online, it’s very lonely, so what we offer is a friendly customer service.”
He added: “The last six months have been the busiest six months that we’ve actually ever had. I think there’s a resurgence of people actually wanting traditional serve-over-the-counter [service], I think there’s people not wanting to use a self-checkout, [but] who want human interaction. I think there are people working from home, I think they want to come and get a coffee and a pie. For them, it breaks up the day, it gets them out of the house.”
The Bread Shop Bakery is currently on its third generation of ownership after Len Gordon first took over the Aigburth Road premises in 1956. He decided to hand over the reins to his son, Frank, eight years later. After his four and a half decades running the shop, Frank’s son Alan has been behind the counter for the last 20 years.
Alan said: “I think it’s been a fantastic achievement to have kept the business open since 1958, there’s been hundreds and hundreds of thousands of businesses come and go, but we’ve still kept going through Covid, bread strikes, financial recession. What we offer is a traditional serve-over-the-counter by a human being service and we offer quality ingredients, so I think that is what has kept us going throughout the generations.”
While his dad’s days serving customers might be behind him, Alan says that Frank still plays a crucial role in the business. He added: “My dad, Frank, he’s not behind the counter serving anymore, he’s 80 in February, but he’s still very influential in the business, he offers me daily guidance from behind the scenes, he’s not a physical member of the shop anymore but he offers his experience and guidance.”
Another integral aspect of the bakery’s success over the years has been its loyal customer base, some of whom have been visiting the shop since the very first day it opened. Alan said: “It really blows my mind when we have a customer come in who’s been shopping with us for 60 years. A lot of the older customers now, who are getting towards 80 and 90, a lot of them have been coming in for 70 years because they didn’t move house as much in those days, you had a family home and stayed in that area [when you moved out].”
He added: “There was someone recently who had been back into the shop for the first time in 40 years after they had emigrated to Australia. They were absolutely gobsmacked that the shop was still open 40 years later.”
As he looks towards the future of the business, Alan says he has no immediate plans to retire. But he has already started showing his two children, Aiden and Ava, the ropes if and when they finally want to take over from him.
He said: “It’s quite a lot of pressure to be honest [owning the business] – it’s got a historical value. I’m obviously trying to keep it open so that my children will hopefully have a job and a business to come into when they leave school. My son, Aiden and my daughter, Ava, they both come in the shop and help out a little bit, so they’d be the fourth generation which is quite unique. So there is an added pressure from myself to keep the business running.”
While he hopes that one day his children might follow in his footsteps, he says that the immediate plans for the future are to keep the business running as usual.
He said: “Basically, it is to just keep going, we’ve launched new pies, Scouse pies are our most popular pie that we sell and we have been selling bowls of Scouse as well, so the plan is to keep going and hopefully with the support of customers, we will still be here.”
